Staggeringly, there have already been five Dynasty Warriors games released on next-gen platforms, four of which were PS2 ports to the 360, while the other was the incomprehensible Dynasty Warriors: Gundam – a release so feeble that the recently released PS2 port was actually an expanded, not a scaled-down, version of its PS3 forebear.

But Koei promised that Dynasty Warriors 6 would mark an end to this practice of releasing last-gen games on next-gen machines. It was to be the first true nextgen Warriors title. In a weird kind of way, we were looking forward to it.

Unfortunately, on the evidence of Dynasty Warriors 6, Koei is about as good at keeping promises as an alcoholic stepfather. Aside from a marginal increase in visual detail, there is nothing next gen about Dynasty Warriors 6 at all, which makes it all the more baffling that it struggles so badly to keep itself together at all. Technically, this has to be one of the shabbiest, sloppiest games ever.

We honestly can’t remember when we last saw pop up this bad. We’re not sure if we even have. Sometimes an entire army will appear right in front of you then, within seconds, disappear just as abruptly. Many objects have a habit of only being visible in the mid-distance, popping into view at about 40 metres away then fading as you get within about ten. On the rare occasions the game actually manages to display everything on screen that ought to be there, it suffers horrendous fits of slowdown. It’s what we imagine Dynasty Warriors 2 would have been like if it had been ported to the PSone. Or maybe the SNES.

Even without the technical atrocities, this isn’t a good game. It differs from its predecessors more than any other title in the series (except Dynasty Warriors 2), which ought to be a good thing, but isn’t. None of the changes make any positive impact at all, and the entire experience feels very muted, plain and not at all in keeping with the series’ over-the-top traditions.

No one really understands the appeal of Warriors games, not even the people who play them, but it definitely has something to do with just how good it feels to wade through a densely packed crowd of enemies, flinging them in all directions with your kill count increasing by the second. But Dynasty Warriors 6 doesn’t even get that simple pleasure right.

Gavin Mackenzie